The Best-Selling Existence Books of All Time

A fresh translation of two seminal works of existentialism. “To understand Jean-Paul Sartre is to understand something important about the present time.”—Iris Murdoch. “Sartre matters because so many fundamental points of his analysis of the human reality are right and true, and because their accuracy and veracity entail real consequences for our lives as individuals and in social groups.”—Benedict O’Donohoe, Philosophy Now.

It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Jean-Paul Sartre, the dominant European intellectual of the post–World War II decades, accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture (“Existentialism Is a Humanism”) was to expound his philosophy as a form of “existentialism,” a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre’s doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence—his self, his being—through the choices he freely makes (“existence precedes essence”). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind. This book presents a new English translation of Sartre’s 1945 lecture and his analysis of Camus’s The Stranger, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre’s introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture.

Philosophy of Existence was first presented to the public as a series of lectures invited by The German Academy of Frankfurt. In preparing these lectures Jaspers, whom the Nazis had already dismissed from his professorship at Heidelberg, knew that he was speaking in Germany for the last time. Jaspers used the occasion to offer an account of the cultural and intellectual situation from which existentialism emerged as well as a summary of his own philosophy.

The book serves three purposes today: it brings the many strands of the existential movement into focus; it provides an overview of Jaspers's own philosophical position; and it demonstrates by example that philosophy need not be irrational, antiscientific, journalistic, or homiletic in order to be existential and engagé. In this short book Jaspers provides a corrective for the popular view of existentialism as a pessimistic, irrationalist philosophy. He maintains that it is, rather part of mainstream of Western philosophy—the form that philosophy has taken in our day.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the legitimacy of the principle, "The per accidens necessarily implies the per se," as it is found in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Special emphasis will be placed upon the function of this principle in the proofs for God's existence. The relevance of the principle in this latter context can be seen at once when it is observed that it is the key to the solution of the well known "prob­ lem of infinite regress. " The investigation of the principle in question will be divided into two Parts.

A preliminary examination of the function of the principle will be made in Part I: Domains Other Than That of Creature-God. The domains to be considered in this Part are those of accident-substance, change, and knowledge. Employing what is learned of the function of the principle in these areas of application, Part II: The Domain of Creature-God will analyze the role of the principle in the proofs for God's existence. This latter Part will constitute the greater portion of the book, since the domain of creatures in their relation to God is the most significant application of the principle in the writings of St. Thomas. In the course of this investigation, relevant analyses by St. Thomas' commentators - both classical and contemporary - will be considered. Finally, in light of the insights offered by St.